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Ezri had feared how Dax would change her, even knowing she had no choice.
More than a few previous hosts had found joining rewrote what they wanted out of life. Even the first host, Lela, found it gave her a curiosity, a yearning for other worlds that she’d never previously possessed.
She didn’t want that. She didn’t want to lose herself.
What she’d neglected to realize is how many had found that Dax gave them themselves back. The previous lives put things into perspective. They revealed, ironically how short life is. They washed all obligations and guilt away—freed them to live as they’d always wanted.
Tobin, plunging into the unknown with the mysterious Cardassian poet. Torias, leaping at love and his piloting dreams. Jadzia, unleashing the fun-loving party animal within after a lifetime as a nervous overachiever.
In the end, Ezri got a bit of both.
She spent her first year desperately untangling what remained of Ezri Tigan from all the other voices chanting in her head. She found herself falling into familiar patterns—Dax’s patterns—dating the men who loved her in her previous lifetime. They insisted it was different, yet there was always something missing. It probably didn’t help that she and Jadzia had the same eye color, hair color…it was just too easy for them to replace Ezri with her.
And yet Dax gave her strength and wisdom. To recognize what was happening when those relationships’ honeymoons were over, when Worf and then Julian found their eyes wandering (to other eyes of blue….) To be the one to pull the plug.
To ask herself what she really wanted out of life, and if it was something she could get on this station.
It meant abandoning old dreams, old loves. It meant finding out new things about herself.
But it wasn’t that Ezri became Dax—or that Dax became her.
It was the new person they became together.
Fusion. Symbiosis.
Leaving DS9 behind to change tactics, change tracks, find different lovers of different species and genders, who had no lingering memory of the woman in her head.
Revisiting old clothes to see what fit. Rediscovering passions from her youth that she’d left behind when she decided on Starfleet.
Exploring new worlds—outside and within herself.
Charting a new course.
At the end of it, she’d find the person she was meant to be.
Captain Ezri Dax.